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• https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/683901
It's very hard to find players there, groups take a long time to roll. The fight with each boss lasts about 10 minutes. Too many adds, people are not used to taking self-heal.
This is to be expected week one, but especially this year because many players are out of commission while they adapt to subclassing -- so we're missing players.
Plus for a long time the trial community had various default metas most players followed that better enabled pugs. Those metas are gone now and new ones are slowly emerging.
But I mean, week one vLC gf pugs last year were brutal. Really, month one.
Open trial vOC pugs have been pretty good in my experience this week.
I don't think this trial is too punishing at all. I was in blind pug run of vOC day one and we somehow managed to pull it off in a chaotic run. And I'm a pretty casual mid-tier trial player.
I have been in one random group so far.
I can easily tell you that the problem is not this particular raid but the lack of gameplay knowledge. Not the trial itself.
It’s a new trial. Best practices and strats haven’t trickled down to the average person yet. Many haven’t even done the trial yet. Every new content has a pug problem due to lack of coordination, possible skill issues, and, well, even guild groups can take hours in new content (there was a vDSR instance that I think ran for over 5 hours back when it released!).
PC/NA Dungeoneer (Tank/DPS/Heal), Trialist (DPS/Tank/Heal), and amateur Battlegrounder (DPS) with a passion for The Elder Scrolls lore
CP 2000+
Warden Healer - Arcanist Healer - Warden Brittleden - Stamarc - Sorc Tank - Necro Tank - Templar Tank - Arcanist Tank
Week 1-2 PUGs are always rough, but usually the problem is average player skill. This coincides with base game difficulty. The game is so easy that it never challenges you at a base level to learn your class, learn your skills, to learn how to survive, etc. A vast majority of the time it's just not necessary. An increase (optional) in overland difficulty that is being worked on currently will not only introduce a new way to experience the game, but I imagine it'll also make the average player better if they do it right.
On top of my previous point, I think that there needs to be more varied, difficult solo content like arenas and veteran versions of delves and public dungeons to challenge players. This would be huge for introducing difficulty to the average player that's optional for better rewards.